


Coming Down

by GrindingGears



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Referenced Life-threatening Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 20:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18351464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrindingGears/pseuds/GrindingGears
Summary: Jazz could see it happening again, and he knew just what to do.





	Coming Down

**Author's Note:**

> IDW1 Prowl desperately needed a support network. At the very least I can give one to G1 Prowl. I originally intend this to be a two-parter. But after re-reading it, I think it holds on it's own. This was written with implied relationships intended, but can be interpreted without them.

Jazz could see it happening. See it in the way Prowl walked and held himself. The way he constantly seemed distracted, as if he was having five different conversations at once. Not even Prime was granted the full extant of the tactician's attention as the two planned out their emergency response to the situation they'd been placed in.

The last battle had been hard. Harder than most. Their forces had taken a serious hit and a good number of bots were still restricted to medbay, leaving the active duty roster options limited. Three were on spark support, including Groove, which meant Defensor was non-operational. Skyfire was also grounded, limiting their area of affect over the planet in general.

Prowl calculated a 67.3987% chance of a repeated attack so soon after the last raid. The Decepticons hadn't gotten out of the battle undamaged, but it would be generous to call the outcome balanced. Megatron's forces had also managed to steal a not insignificant amount of energon from the power plant they'd targeted, meaning it would be longer before the ache of empty fuel tanks pressed them into action again. However, a well fueled army was never something one wished of their enemy, and any confrontation now would be harder and faster than normal. A battle could be deadly.

Their best option was to hole up in the Ark and hope the Decepticons were too busy celebrating their victory to notice the Autobots putting up their defenses. Still, no one could forget the estimated 23.7420% chance of a direct assault on the base before their forces could recover to full operational capacity. Significantly higher enough than normal to put everyone on edge.

Jazz prayed to Primus that Megatron remained sated enough to leave the human cities alone until everyone was back in fighting form. It would break the sparks of Hot Spot's team if Prowl had to order them to stand down while humans were in danger. But everyone knew that none of the COs would challenge the SIC on this. Prime included. Too many of their kind had been needlessly lost to this war already.

It was strange to think these kind of battles had been the norm not too long ago. Or at least what felt like not too long ago to the formerly stasis locked mechs of the crew. This had been one of the worst battles they'd had since waking up on Earth, as far Cybertronian injuries were concerned. Before they had humans and a delicate organic ecosystem to worry about, there had been no pulled punches when it came to fighting.

Jazz still had trouble processing the idea that the Decepticons were holding back in respect for organic life. Prowl had backed his presented findings with the theory that Megatron did not want to risk disrupting his soldiers' main means towards energon acquisition, as well as a general wariness towards what could trigger organics' habit of dying under the smallest change in their physical environment. A concern the Autobots very much shared in.

Debatable Decepticon consideration for humanity's well-being aside, the Autobots would be licking their wounds from this battle for a deca-cycle at least. Until then, there were a thousand potential branching paths of what-ifs and maybes Prowl's Tac Hud was currently churning through in an effort to eliminate as many threads leading to their inevitable destruction as possible. With the way he kept changing topic in the middle of sentences and pacing about the room in a circuit between his TechOps terminal, the Security station, and Teletraan I's human news feed; his battle computer hadn't shut down since the conflict's end either.

Meaning the computer and his tactical systems were competing over available RAM, and Prowl's personality unit was splintering in order to keep track of all the information being fed directly into his CPU in order to purge any logical fallacies that should arise before they got encoded

into a short-term memory cache and used as basis to support any faulty conclusions. To put it lightly, Prowl was overwhelmed.

"Hey Ironhide," Jazz calls to the mech beside him, never taking his optics off Prowl's antsy form. "Think ya can hold down the fort for a while?"

The Ordnance Officer leans back from his console to look over at Jazz, then follows the saboteur's gaze before giving a small grunt and returning to his work.

"Yeah, think we can manage without y'all. Get him out of here before he gives Red a spark attack, would ya?" the gruff mech retorts, giving a short nod towards the corner of the room where Inferno is talking softly to a particularly twitchy Red Alert.

Rising from his seat, Jazz locks down his own terminal and walks towards the heart of the Command Center where Prowl is leaning over Prime's shoulder to address something on their leader's screen. Swinging wide around the central station in order to approach from the side and give the distracted mech a better chance to register him before getting too close, Jazz plots his advance.

His intent does not go unnoticed. Prime may wear a mask, but Jazz can read the relieved smile on Optimus' face from a mile away.

Deliberate in every move he makes, the Spec Ops Head reaches out to gently place a servo on the ex-enforcer's upper arm while pulsing calm energy through his field. Despite his effort, Prowl still jumps at the touch, servo coming to rest just outside his subspace. He fixes Jazz with a confused look, optics unfocused as his battle computer makes a grab for operational control in the face of a possible threat. Jazz marks the fact that Prowl's pistol remains tucked away as indication that the tactician is still in control.

"Let's get out a' here for a bit," he offers the frazzled mech, rubbing his thumb in a soothing motion over the smooth metal of Prowl's arm.

It takes Prowl a moment to parse through Jazz's words. When he finally comprehends the statement, he frowns at the laissez-faire mech.

"Jazz, we're in the middle of a severe risk duty shift. All able bodies are required at their station," Prowl's tone is chastising, but the confusion never leaves his face. A sign that the battle in his head has progressed to a point where he can no longer assess his own condition in the moment.

"It's fine. Right Prime?" Jazz keeps his tone light as he asks over the SIC's helm. He doesn't need to look away from Prowl's conflicted face to know what Optimus' answer will be.

"Of course Jazz," Optimus happily encourages before addressing the overwhelmed mech directly, "You deserve to take a break Prowl."

The tactician looks back and forth between the two smiling mechs in front of him, the confusion on his face only deepening as trust in his friends wars with his sense of duty. Jazz can feel the turmoil in Prowl's field as the fight continues inside his helm, his battle computer demanding to run a threat analysis while the Tac Hud tries to process the perceived strange behavior of his fellow officers. Jazz sends out gentle reassurance in response, giving the tactician's arm a slight squeeze to encourage the mech to focus on things outside his helm.

Jazz hopes Prowl can win this battle; with the mess they have down there, Ratchet would be extra crabby if he got called away from medbay right now to manually restart Prowl's OS in order to avoid a crash that would just result in another medical berth being occupied. Prowl wouldn't be happy either. Reboots might prevent him from spending a mega-cycle on medical leave while his hardware does a deep system scan and defrag in order to ensure nothing important got damaged in a crash (like say his ability for cost-benefit analyses or long term planning), but they gave him one pit of a helmache. Not to mention how annoyed he'd be at the cycles worth of processing he'd loose before it all could be saved to long-term storage.

While Prowl fights his programming, around him the Command Center collectively lock their fans so as not to miss his highly anticipated response.

"Okay."

Prowl's voice is distorted when he finally speaks. But obvious concern from his friends _had_ won out over personal duty, and he'd relented to Jazz's insistence. At his response, a gust of air cycles across the room in a collective sigh as relief filters through everyone's frames.

"Come on." Jazz smiles up a Prowl, ignoring the frankly rude eavesdroppers, as he guides the unsteady tactician towards the door. They take it slow, Prowl's steps unsure as his processor begins reassessing thread priority and his frame starts to let go of tension he'd been unaware he was holding.

Jazz can almost feel the gratitude that follows them out of the room, but he doesn't give it too much concern. It had been a long couple of cycles and they could all use a break. Removing the greatest source of unease would do everyone a deal of good. The hardest part was done, and had been accomplished without anyone getting shot. Now they got to relax.

Before anything else, Jazz would take Prowl to the tactician's quarters (the closer of their two), and distract him until he felt secure enough for his battle computer to turn off. Once the computer was idle, he'd have an easier time instructing the Tac Hud to move to background operations, and he could lay down for a quick defrag (or a long one if that's what his CPU needed). Then, Jazz would work remotely in the room while Prowl slept, that way the SIC didn't have to worry about being unreachable should anything urgent come up.

After that, when Prowl had taken the time to care for himself, they'd return to the Command Center. Prime would ask Prowl how he'd slept as if nothing unusual had happened. Red Alert would present a security report. Ironhide would give a logistics summary. Ratchet would send First Aid to give a medical update, and Perceptor or Wheeljack would be called to report on any pressing engineering concerns. Everything would go back to normal. Any resentments over things said and done when synapses were strained would be wordlessly forgiven or dealt with later at a more appropriate time.

Whenever they talked about these moments, Prowl would express his shame for them. It wasn't exactly a secret that they happened occasionally, and even officers weren't that good at keeping non-classified information confidential when it came to their personal lives. But Jazz reassured him not to take it to spark; they all had their moments of weakness and they each had someone to lean on when they needed a little extra support. Slag, Inferno only had confidential security clearance because he was so good at keeping Red Alert calm in even the most stressful situations.

No one would hold taking a cycle to reorient against him if things got too much. They each had their own way of dealing with it when the immediate threats had passed, but the stress had not.

Red Alert frequently fritzed himself into a breakdown if Inferno didn't drag him away to the safety of their shared quarters before his coding got caught in a loop. Ironhide occasionally stormed out cursing about how he needed to blow something up, then ended up doing target practice on the shooting range with Bluestreak of all mechs. Prime regularly worked himself into near stasis at his station until Prowl pulled the only rank that could overrule him and threatened to call the CMO; once he had trotted off to his room like a good soldier, Ratchet eventually wound up in there with him anyway before long.

Later that day, after the injured had been tended to, Ratchet himself was expected to make his usual post-high-casualty-battle appearance, stalking into the Command Center to threaten them each in turn with contrived medical procedures before storming back out to spend the next mega-cycle making the medbay shine with the help of First Aid, Wheeljack, Hoist, or all three. Even Jazz had his days where he had to be locked in the brig's highest security cell and watched to make sure he didn't sneak off to slit someone's throat. And if he tried, Prowl was the one sitting at the door with an acid pellet gun pointed at his helm, making sure he didn't do something stupid.

When they each eventually got over themselves, they'd all take the walk of shame, slinking back to Command to be asked if they were okay, then returning to work. It's just how things sometimes went after over 4 million years of loss and near death experiences. Today was simply Prowl's turn through the emotional wringer, and Jazz was more than happy to be there for him until he made it to the other side.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and critique are welcome. I try to respond to all comments, but sometimes it takes me a while. Check out my [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/GrindingGears) to see my drafts before I post them here. I'm also lurking around on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/GrindingGears8).


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